CHAPTER 4 Basic concepts of information science

Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T. S. Eliot, Choruses from 'The Rock'

It is hardly to be expected that a single concept of information would satisfactorily account for the numerous possible applications of this general field. Claude Shannon

Information is information, not matter or energy. Norbert Wiener

Introduction In this chapter, we will consider some of the basic concepts of the information sciences: information and knowledge, documents and collections, relevance and 'aboutness', and information use and users. It may seem strange to find that there is still debate about the nature of these very fundamental ideas: as strange, perhaps, as finding a doctor who had no idea what a 'disease' or a 'treatment' was, or an engineer who had no idea what was meant by 'materials' or 'design'. That is not to say that there need be a perfect understanding of these concepts; doctors treated diseases, sometimes quite effectively, long before they had any realistic idea of what caused them. But most professions expect to have some understanding of the basic concepts with which they deal. 'Information', 'knowledge', 'document', and so on, are tricky concepts, which can have many different meanings, and can be understood in many different ways. These are not just academic matters; they can have a real effect on professional practice. What someone understands by 'knowledge', for example, and its relation to 'information', will determine how they go about the practical business of 'knowledge management'. And what a librarian or information specialist understands by a 'document' will determine what sort of things they keep on their shelves or in their computer files. 64 INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION SCIENCE BASIC CONCEPTS OF INFORMATION SCIENCE 65

We begin by looking at perhaps the most fundamental of concepts: information ... almost every scientific discipline uses the concept of information within its own itself, and knowledge. context and with regard to specific phenomena . . . There are many concepts of information, and they are embedded in more or less explicit theoretical structures. Information and knowledge Shannon and Wiener and I Varied conceptions of information: 'information is ...' Have found it confusing to try .(Iff OttA MtlyV {!•*• f- fragmented knowledge (Bertie Brookes) To measure sagacity knowledge packaged for a user (CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge) And channel capacity meaningful data (Luciano Floridi) By £ pj log p; Anonymous, Behavioural Science, 1962, 7 (July issue), 395 an assemblage of data in a comprehensible form capable of communication and use (John Feather and Paul Sturges)

Information, argued John Feather and Paul Sturges in the 1997 Routledge patterns of self-organized complexity, providing meaning-in-context and promoting understanding (David Bawden) International Encyclopaedia of Information and Library Science, is probably the communicated signs (Claude Shannon) most used, and the least precisely understood, term in the library and information world. a change of structure (Nick Belkin and Steve Robertson) The best way to understand the concept of 'information' has been debated a stimulus originating in one system that affects the interpretation by another system of either the second system's relationship to the first or of for many years; the more so as the ideas of the 'information age' and 'information the relationship the two systems share with a given environment (Andrew society' have gained currency. The 'commonsense' meaning of the word relates Madden) to knowledge, news or intelligence, given and received, so that someone becomes a difference which makes a difference (Gregory Bateson) 'informed'. But the word has had many different meanings over the years; its some pattern of organization of matter and energy given meaning by a entry in the full Oxford English Dictionary of 2010, which sh